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Language enhancements:

Environments

Collections

• New and improved sorting utilities for Arrays and OrderedCollections.
• New FloatCollection inherits the convenient add:/remove: API of OrderedCollection, but using an internal FloatArray for better efficiency.
• An all-new LRUCache implementation.
• Promise is now a fully chainable object with decent error handling.

Compiler

• Moved classifying and logging behavior out of Compiler (a responsibility of Behavior).

Numerics

• Faster and better Random.
• log/ln fixed for integers.

Dates and Times

• New methods provide access to primitive 240 and 241, which can provide microsecond resolution timestamps on Cog VMs.
• New convenience methods allow creating DateAndTimes relative to now (e.g., "5 minutes ago").
• Parsing improvements.

Text, Graphics, Sound

• Form>pixelValueAt: now makes use of the new primitivePixelValueAt:, avoiding the overhead of a full BitBlt.
• Elimination of the dual hierarchy of NewParagraph & MultiNewParagraph etc and TextStopConditions and lots of Scanner improvements.
• PaintBoxMorph re-engineering.
• ADPCMCodec performance improvement.

IDE, Monticello and Trunk process improvements

• Several MVC fixes allow debugging in MVC once again.
• Smart-Splitters causes the bars between browser panes to automatically optimize their position.
• Fixed color-selection from anywhere on the screen working again.
• Improved command-line interface via Smalltalk run: [ :arg1 :arg2 | ... ].
• squeakDebug.log report length is now settable.
• MCReorganizationPreloader now resolves moves between arbitrary packages, independent of their order in the configuration.
• mcz/snapshot/source.st now encoded in UTF8 instead of latin-1.
• New pre-selection highlight feature for lists.
• System space analysis now available in Help | About.
• Message-traces can be pared more easily.

Configuration

• Lots of improvements in the CI build/test slave.
• Installer now documents externally-loadable packages as simple literal structures that can be merged via Installer>>#merge:.
• MC ancestry history strings can now be stubbed for a smaller image and sustainable MC history.

History and Accounting Tools

• A great new historical website by Bob Arning.
• MC history and origin is now available for methods and class-definitions from browser menus.
• A new amazing ObjectHistory makes it possible to efficiently track the born-on date of any object to a resolution of one minute.
• Added "search history" to Package history browser.

Fixes and cleanups

• Packages organized toward eliminating circular dependencies, and with proper concern for existing and future UI frameworks.
• Updated uses of SmalltalkImage current to, simply, "Smalltalk."
• Moving away from use of Utilities.
• More preferences made pragma-based.
• Compiler factorings and cleanups.
• Diminished excessive usage of ReadWriteStream.
• ProtoObject API balanced and minimal.

Application Upgrade Notes:

• Default Float printing is now true to its internal representation. Apps must now use appropriate methods to format Floats rather than roundTo:.
• ($a to: $b) now returns 'ab' rather than #($a $b).
• Remove OneCharacterSymbols optimization.
• LRUCache instance migrations, if any. See post-scripts in Collections-ul.546, 547.
• Rectangles with 0 area (e.g., lines) can now intersect.
• MultiNewParagraph was removed. Applications should now use NewParagraph.